Healthy Eating For Adults
What is Healthy Eating?
Sometimes it’s easy to get confused by all the information out there about healthy eating. So let’s get down to basics…
Eating a Range of Good Foods
Healthy eating is about enjoying a variety of foods from each of the food groups every day.
The Australian Guide to Healthy Eating can help us understand what foods we need each day. We should aim to eat:
- Plenty of vegetables, legumes and fruit
- Plenty of cereals, including breads, rice, pasta and noodles – preferably ones that are wholegrain
- Lean meat, fish, poultry and/or alternatives
- Milks, yoghurts, cheeses and/or alternatives.
Following the Keys to Healthy Eating
Next, we can fine-tune healthy eating with seven important steps:
- Be careful of those foods that are outside the five food groups and only eat them every-now-and then or in small amounts. These ‘extra’ foods do not fit into the food groups because they’re not essential for our bodies.
- Drink plenty of water.
- Limit the saturated fat that you eat and watch your total fat intake.
- Choose reduced-fat varieties of dairy foods where possible – but remember, reduced fat milks are not suitable for children under the age of two.
- Choose foods that are low in salt.
- Eat only moderate amounts of sugars and foods containing added sugars.
- For adults who choose to drink alcohol, limit the amount you drink.
How Much of Each Food Group?
How much we need from each of the food groups depends on our:
- sex
- age
- body size
- activity level.
Find out how many serves of each food group you need.
Is Your Eating on Track?
To find out more about the Five Food Groups, occasional foods and how much you need to eat to be healthy, see Recommended number of serves for adults.
Need Some Help?
For some great practical ideas, tips and recipes to improve your eating habits take a look at our healthy eating tips and find out how to make healthy eating deliciously easy at home, work and on the go.
Don’t forget to also look at ways adults can become more physically active.